The maintenance of electronic health records has become mandatory for each and every healthcare provider, and though it needs extra efforts from the physicians, the EHRs are very helpful to both physicians and patients. What the patients need is detailed instructions regarding the procedure to access and view their own records in times of need. From a survey* conducted on patients and medical professionals, some interesting facts about their opinions on the EHRs have come up.
Professionals’ Perspective:
More than 100 medical professionals were surveyed for this purpose and the results of the survey give the following key points:
- Providing care: About 86% of the people surveyed feel that the EHRs make it easier to provide service and care to patients. An interesting thing to note here is that only 6% of them feel it gets difficult to work with EHRs and 8% say it does not make any difference.
- Sharing data: Again around 85% of the medical professionals feel that the EHRs have made it easier to share patient data with other healthcare providers.
- Identifying issues: About 80% of them agree to the point that identifying potential issues or errors in patient’s records have become easier with EHRs.
- Billing and Insurance: About 77% feel that patient billing has become a lot easier, and 72% feel that communication with insurance providers has also become a lot easier.
- Occupation: If the survey population is segregated on the basis of occupation, then administrative staff, laboratory staff and specialist medical practitioners are the professionals who are 100% happy with the EHR system.
- Type of facility: If the type of facility is taken as the criteria, the group practices and hospitals have the best positive opinion on EHR system with 100% and 92% respectively.
- Age: When the survey population is grouped based on age, the age group of 40-49 is the happiest group with 92% being happy with the EHRs.
- Time taken: Another interesting fact revealed from the survey is that the average number of hours a week dedicated to working with health records has decreased to 18.6 after shifting to EHRs from 19.7 which is prior to shifting to EHRs.
- Efficiency: The efficiency with respect to general workplace productivity has considerably increased and instances of clerical errors have drastically decreased while there is no considerable change in the financial expenses of the medical facility as a result of switching over to EHRs.
Patients’ Perspective:
Over 1000 patients with EHR access were surveyed for this purpose and the results of the survey give the following key points:
- Importance: About 64% patients are of the opinion that it is highly important or to an extent important to have access to their own health records.
- Physician’s use: About 76% of patients think that there will be a positive effect on the healthcare they receive if their doctor has access to EHR and uses it.
- Instructions: Around 58% patients felt that they have properly explained how to access their records and patients who received better instructions accessed their records more frequently.
- Health care facility: Hospitals and private practices stand in the first two positions with respectively 48% and 45% when rated on patients’ opinion on the facilities that provided them the best EHR access.
From the overall results of the survey, it can be understood that both medical professionals and patients are thinking positively about EHRs. Hence, it is very much required for all healthcare facilities to switch to EHR solutions if anyone has not done it yet. Avontix provides the best EHR solutions for the ASC patient records management.
*source of information: https://selecthub.com/perceptions-of-electronic-health-records